PhoenicianGold
Emperor
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2018
- Messages
- 1,828
She's a woman...who did very little of note. IMO there's no point of including Assyria without either Tiglath-Pileser III or a Sargonid: Ashurbanipal, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, or Sargon II all being good options. IMO most of Firaxis' female leader choices have been good, and the few that have been less good have at least been defensible--with the possible exception of Kristina, who at least has a big personality. Shammuramat would be as dubious as Kristina but without the personality. Ancient Mesopotamia is just not the place to look for interesting female leaders; try Egypt instead, which had a good handful of them, even if you don't count Cleopatra VII Philopator. (Ancient Arabia actually had quite a few queens, but I don't think we'll ever see a pre-Islamic Arabia in Civ.)
I don't disagree with you.
But....she is a woman. And a female leader in the middle east, which is really hard to come by outside of Egypt (which btw I am hoping for Hatshepsut over any other Egyptian alternate). Much like Six Sky was chosen pretty much solely to differentiate the Maya superficially from the Aztec, and Seondeok from China and Japan...she might be chosen purely because she offers greater aesthetic difference from Gilgabro.
Honestly, I don't care much for the historical significance of leaders as long as they are given enough personality. Since Shammuramat is kind of a blank canvas the devs could do a lot with her like with Gilgabro. I realize this and other characterizations are offensive to historical purists, but the way I see it Assyria is superfluous as it is; I would think people would be happy to get Assyria or Babylon in the game in any form.